


Following the Ways of the Land

by ivanolix



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Exploration, Female Character of Color, Female Friendship, Female-Centric, Gen, Gen Fic, POV Female Character, Wordcount: 5.000-10.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-21
Updated: 2009-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-22 03:30:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/233256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivanolix/pseuds/ivanolix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Boomer's journey isn't over—she's just starting it now. Daybreak AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Following the Ways of the Land

Sharon doesn’t know how lucky she is that Helo was shot before she met up with the Colonials, that Athena stayed behind because Kara said Hera would need a father if they found her. At the moment, she wouldn’t necessarily call it “lucky”. That’s what Kara Thrace is for.

“I’m making my choice,” Sharon tells her, handing over the small bundle of innocence that she frakked over too many times than even revenge called for. “Even if it is my last one.”

Kara pauses. Sharon glances up at her eyes, those familiar eyes that she remembers seeing so many times across a card table or a bunkroom or a hangar bay. Kara’s aren’t cold, and they don’t hate her—she’s always been a little different.

Then she steps forward, and her eyes glint with stubbornness and memory. “You don’t get to stop making choices, Boomer,” she says, almost a low hiss. “You don’t just give up.” Kara grabs Sharon’s arm and yanks her towards the group.

“But sir,” one of the marines with Kara says.

“Anyone who wants to turn down help that was defending Galactica four years before you were brought on as marines, let me know so I can knock your heads together _before_ we get back to our mission.” Kara’s eyes flash, and the group is on the move again.

Sharon’s at Kara’s side, and her heart is aching a little because four years before New Caprica is when she and Kara were defending Galactica from Helo and Racetrack’s evil Blue Team, while Adama and Tigh were down on some planet for a briefing. It doesn’t really count militarily, but that’s not why Kara brought it up. Any other day, Sharon might worry at how much she feels like her old human self, but she doesn’t care as she jogs by Kara’s side with her gun ready to kill toasters for Hera’s sake.

It was a bit of a cheat, bringing that up. Kara’s already given her flying frak about Sharon, though, so for once in Sharon’s recent life it’s the _rules_ that are treated like yesterday’s garbage.

***

Sharon’s there when someone asks Kara why she did it. It might be Helo, or he might be the one holding Athena back, convincing her that Hera is what matters. It’s not Chief, since they won’t let him near her either.

Assault, kidnapping, attempted-murder, those are Sharon’s crimes. But Kara just says, “We forgave _genocide_ ; this feels right enough.”

She doesn’t quite smile at Sharon then, nor does she do so when she has to make her case to the Old Man. But if Sharon learned anything as a human, it was that you don’t read Kara by her smiles or her frowns, but by the impossible deeds she does. And she gets Adama to look at them both and say, “I’m not going to interfere with this.”

Sharon doesn’t follow Kara as she turns to leave. “Sir?” Adama doesn’t look at her. “I’m sorry; I owed you one.”

She stands there a second longer than she probably should, but Adama’s look of regret is worth it. “You did,” he says in a low tone.

Sharon swallows, and the lump in her throat is gone.

She’s smiling on the inside as they carefully walk Galactica’s corridors, and Kara says under her breath, “You should probably go down to the planet—more space, less tension.”

“Sure, why not,” Sharon says, a little blandly. But there’s a slight quirk of her lips as she looks at Kara.

***

Sharon reaches down to touch the yellow-green grass and kneels to stay there, fingers twirling in the soft cool strands. A ladybug crawls onto her finger, and the wash of memories of Tauron may be fake, but they cleanse her mind of the Colony and all it did to her. It’s a quiet cleansing, and Sharon just sits in the grass and breathes.

“Boomer,” says a quiet voice behind her.

Sharon looks up, heart tensing a moment, and not quite releasing even when she sees that it’s Ellen. Her blonde curls are being blown across her face by the breeze and Sharon can’t quite read her.

“I was going to say something hard,” Ellen says after a pause and exhales shortly. “But it wouldn’t have been exactly true. So maybe I should just say _that_ , yes?” Sharon watches her face flit from Ellen of the Fleet to Ellen of the Cylons, and though it may flit back again in a second, Sharon senses the familiarity of this moment. Ellen’s voice is quiet again when she speaks. “When you sit there, thinking quietly, I can still see my child in you. But my love isn’t enough, and I don’t just mean for you.”

Sharon nods before she says anything else, and then Ellen sighs.

“I believe it now,” Sharon says, as she looks back down at her hands. “That you loved us. You don’t have to approve of us, or even want us back, to do that.”

“I can’t, Boomer,” Ellen says, and Sharon fully buys the note of pain in her voice. “You are still a beloved child of mine, but I can’t.”

Sharon watches the ladybug on her finger spread its wings and fly off, and she hears the swish of Ellen’s skirts as she also turns to leave. Glancing up, Sharon watches the figure in white, and that silhouette is instinctively familiar. The faces of Sharon’s imaginary parents come to her mind in a rush of love and grief, and Sharon stands to her feet with a sharp intake of breath.

Running the few steps it takes, Sharon stands in front of Ellen for a short second before clasping the only mother she has left in her arms. Ellen breathes in deeply, but she doesn’t pull back. Sharon buries her face in that blonde hair, and it’s like an old memory. Her throat tightens with regret for everything she lost. “Thank you for loving me,” she whispers.

Ellen’s hand gently strokes her shoulder for a second. “I am so sorry for you, and what happened,” she murmurs.

Sharon pulls back, feeling her eyes slightly wet. Ellen’s have pain in them, and disappointment as well as worry; Sharon knows she deserves it. What matters is that love is behind that, a mother’s love that no child’s act can erase. It surprises them both when Sharon smiles and then walks back to her own piece of grass.

***

Sharon is scared to think of how close she was to accepting death as inevitably near. The unending _pressing_ upon her of prejudice and judgment made her despair; she never realized until now that she could stand free of it all.

Even in the golden light of New Earth, though, she’s alone. Sitting on a sun-warmed grey boulder, she looks up and squints at the bright star they now orbit. Clean and yellow, right now she knows that it will soon gather to its bosom what’s left of the Fleet. Her loneliness had hit like an arrow when she heard that Galactica was going with it, guided by Kara’s Anders as his final act. Her Galactica, her old friend, gone. It had accepted the Cylons better than anyone, and for a moment it seems romantic to Sharon to die in Galactica’s heart on the way into the sun.

Then she shivers and closes her eyes, and she wants the sun’s warmth always like it is now, shining on her through a blue and clouded atmosphere. She’s not ready to die. She’s not. Especially not alone.

Her brothers and sisters don’t speak to her, the humans are all too wary, and even among her creators Tigh blames her for shooting the Old Man all that time ago, Ellen is too much Ellen to embrace Boomer (not least because it would be against Saul’s wishes), and Chief...well, Boomer can’t blame him. She never had a chance to meet Tory or Anders, and since she’ll never know now, she chooses to imagine that they would not have blamed her too much. No more than she blames herself.

Sharon looks up again at where Galactica is flying into the sun, and she doesn’t want to die alone. Deep down, something tells her that she’s weak for not being able to exist on her own, but she can’t change all in an instant.

“Nice to feel a sun again, isn’t it?”

Sharon looks to her left, and Kara is somehow there now, also looking up at the sun. She stands stock still in the grass, arms crossed over her green Colonial jacket, rigid as if she’s holding herself together. Her face is slightly shadowed, but Sharon can still see the traces of tears and redness in her eyes. Like Sharon, she’s not only a different person than she used to be, but almost everyone has left her in one way or another. No wonder she stretched out her hand to save Sharon. Sharon doesn’t care what she is, not when what she does is what’s relevant.

“I don’t remember ever feeling it so alone,” Sharon says after a moment.

Kara’s eyes dart up to the sun, then back down, and she swallows hard as if to suppress something. Her arms cross a little tighter. “It’s not so bad in the end,” she says, and her voice is almost as steady as she probably wants it to be. “True journeys need for us...to be separate before they can end, and end well.” She glances up again, but not at the sun, and her gaze is distant.

Sharon feels a pang for more than one reason, but only one forms itself into words that she blurts out. “Is yours ending?”

Kara looks at her closely, eyes full of tears that are clouding another emotion behind her eyes. “Yeah,” she says quietly, and Sharon realizes that the emotion is closure.

Sharon breathes in sharply, because she never thought that Kara had changed that much. She’s not ready for Kara to finish her journey. “Don’t,” she says, a lump in her throat. “Don’t let it, please, Kara.”

Kara’s brow creases a little, but it’s more confusion than frown.

Sharon swallows and tries to find better words. “I know the past is gone. I know we’re supposed to find a new future now. But...I don’t have one yet. The past is all I have, and you’re the only piece I can count on right now.”

“I’m ready to say my goodbyes, Sharon,” Kara says in almost a whisper. “You’ll be fine soon, I know. You don’t think I’d leave a friend if it would break them, do you?”

“I don’t think I’m ready,” Sharon protests, and she feels guilty but not enough to lie. The more Kara says, the more Sharon thinks that she could use that, use Kara’s assurance just a little longer...how will Sharon learn if Kara goes now? The idea of trial and error, by herself, makes her feel sick.

Kara uncrosses her arms, and the tension of her grief fades a moment as she steps closer to Sharon. Her hand brushes Sharon’s, and she looks in her eyes, surety behind the welled tears. “It’ll be okay.”

Sharon closes her eyes and clenches her jaw, trying not to break down, because if Kara is leaving now she’ll need all the strength she has.

When she opens them again, Kara has vanished. Sharon looks around the wide field, tall grass and wildflowers rippling in the soft breeze. No sight of Kara.

Sharon exhales shakily and tries to feel that Kara is right. Maybe if she’s the sort of person who can disappear cleanly when she’s come to her end—maybe she can’t be wrong about this. But Sharon’s fingers twist together, and she doesn’t think it’ll be okay.

Returning to her boulder, she lets her hand rest on its warmth and closes her eyes. Each breath brings in the fresh air of this planet, and lets out just enough emotion to keep her from falling into pieces.

She doesn’t know how long she sits there, but the sun is still high when she hears a slight rustling to her left.

“So this is what you’re going to do? Just sit?”

Sharon blinks and her head flies up to see Kara standing there, the same as she was before she disappeared. “You left,” she says in a kind of gasp.

“I had other goodbyes.” Sharon thinks that only Kara could have both warmth and pain in her eyes at once, like she does now.

“But...you’re back,” Sharon says, even though it probably sounds a little pathetic.

“I don’t leave friends with nothing,” Kara says with a hint of a smile. “Not if they don’t know what to do with that nothing. And I have a feeling that I can stretch out these last few steps of my journey, maybe, for that.”

Sharon closes her eyes for a second, but Kara is still there when she opens them. “What are you?”

“Your friend,” Kara says neatly, with an obvious toss of her head as she steps forward to put a hand on Sharon’s shoulder. “Come on.”

“What are we doing?” Sharon almost can’t find words, so grateful is she that Kara’s hand on her feels solid and real.

“Leaving all that.” Kara nods back at the New Earth civilization.

Sharon notices the pack hanging on Kara’s back, then. She reaches up her arm to match Kara’s, across each others’ shoulders. Her free hand wipes the leftover dampness in her eyes, and she smiles down at the grass before looking out at where they’re walking.

She and Kara are walking off together, just like old times only...different. Kara wasn’t lying when she said it was going to be okay. Sharon doesn’t know where this journey is ending, but she has a good feeling. She lets out a quiet laugh. She has a good feeling.

***

Their first day isn’t exactly happy. You can leave it all behind but you can’t forget it that easily. But as Sharon recognizes contentment more than resignation in Kara’s face, she can feel a little of it herself.

Kara stops at a stream, says they need to catch a fish if they want supper.

“You can’t just...poof one into existence?” Sharon asks, bold as well as curious.

It’s the first time Kara’s made that off-kilter smirk in a long time, Sharon guesses by how it doesn’t come quite smoothly. “Maybe,” Kara says. “I’m not gonna try, though. All that’s for...later.”

Later, as they sit together and eat the tiny fish that they managed to flop onto shore, Sharon watches Kara’s face in the flicker of firelight. She looks focused on relaxing, which has got to be the strangest thing to behold. Whatever she’s doing here with Sharon, it’s not about worry. Sharon likes that.

Sharon eats her dinner and pokes at the fire with a stick. It smells good, the scorched fish and the woody smoke. She sniffs long and slowly, and thinks that this is the most at home she’s felt in years. “Do you remember when we were stationed above Picon?” she asks a minute later. “Karl had a girl he was going to see, and you and I got our leave a day later. We went to that bar—what was it—the Pink Lady?”

Kara breathes out. “That.”

For a second, Sharon wonders if she’s changed so much that nothing from then is the same now.

“That was a trip,” Kara says, and her eyes dance like the flames as she says it.

Sharon smiles to herself. Memories are safe, then. “The Colonel’s wife was there, right? Ellen?”

Kara’s quick laugh is like a couple shots from an automatic weapon. “She was, wasn’t she? Damn, I forgot...”

“Weird how even thinking about a topless bar doesn’t bring back normal memories anymore,” Sharon says, poking at the fire again.

“Or maybe normal was always weird,” Kara says back, leaning in and putting her hands up to the fire’s warmth.

“Sounds good to me,” Sharon murmurs.

The clear night sky blankets the air above them with bright stars, their smoke drifting up and out into it. But even though they’re off on their own, Sharon feels safe here. She falls asleep with the scent of campfire all over her, and the image that follows her into dreamland is of constellations she has no names for.

***

They wash in the stream next morning, and it feels good to shiver as the cold splashes them. Kara pales and shakes just like a human, and once again Sharon is comforted to see her being so...solid.

“Oh—” Kara’s word turns into an exhale. “God!” She shakes her head as if that’ll warm her, and the flying droplets from her hair splash Sharon’s face.

Sharon’s laugh is more of a cough. “Regretting sticking around?”

“Let’s not talk about that, got it?” Kara says, but with a freeness to her voice that keeps the words from being sharp.

Sharon absently swipes a bit of water at Kara, and she glares back, before they scramble to the bank and shiver into their clothes. Normally Sharon would say that this sort of thing never gets old, but it’s not quite accurate. _They_ got old, at least. Older. Sharon can feel it in both of them.

Today’s just another day of walking, up hill and down, on this mostly empty planet. The sun is scorching hot at midday, and the sunset almost blinds their eyes come evening. Kara scrunches up her face as they stop for a moment.

“Rain’s coming,” she says, indicating a puff of clouds on the horizon.

“There’s a tent in there, right?” Sharon asks, nodding to Kara’s small pack.

“There’s a waterproof tarp.” Kara’s tone is flat, and then she grins, and the trip has really started.

“There’s some trees over by that river, I’ll bet,” Sharon says. Then, because spontaneity is good, “Let’s say we race this.”

Kara slaps her shoulder and darts off. The ground is solid beneath their feet as Sharon’ is swift to follow, military boots pounding the soil and punctuating the quiet of the air. It’s a breathless tie, and then they have to find a way to assemble a tent. The wood feels good in her hands, Sharon thinks. Something alive that’s not mechanical; she’s missed that.

“You had good eyesight,” Kara says as she ties one side of the tent to a sapling.

“Cylon,” Sharon says and shrugs.

Kara laughs, like a burden’s been lifted, and stakes the tent into place before tossing the rock she’s using as a hammer to Sharon.

***

“Didn’t you ever wonder?” Sharon asks as they hike down a cliff. “I mean, didn’t she ever seem a little different?”

“So did Helo.” Kara locks her feet in place to help Sharon down the last slide. “Love makes people different. I’d never seen you in love before, so I couldn’t know with her.”

Sharon lets that hang a few seconds before saying, “You didn’t know about Chief.”

Kara glances at her, keen eyes catching much in that brief second. “Not before the...no.”

“Everyone else did.” Sharon shrugs a little.

“Was never good at relationships, Sharon.” Kara walks on steadily, steps too even. “Not just my own.”

“Maybe because you didn’t want to change.” Sharon doesn’t know why she says it.

Kara turns back. “What?”

“Well, you’re right, love does things to people.” Sharon takes a couple quick steps so that she’s walking right by Kara. “But you have to let it. I don’t think you’ve ever let people change you, Kara, no matter how much you loved them. When you did change, it was all by accident.”

Kara looks back at her walking stick, and the ground ahead of them. Sharon sees the corner of her mouth quirk.

“Oh, so just because I didn’t do so great either, my opinion doesn’t matter?” Sharon’s tone isn’t bitter, though.

“Didn’t say that,” Kara says, then looks back up at Sharon. “I can’t help but think, I changed plenty, but maybe it was too late or the wrong kind of change.”

Sharon’s brow furrows a little, and she can’t quite grasp what Kara’s referring to. “Is this the whole crazy thing I heard about?”

“Depends on who was talking to you,” Kara mutters. “Apparently I had more than one.”

“It’s not that hard to picture,” Sharon admits.

Kara’s eyebrows rise and fall in a quick second. “No, and it’s not that hard to make it make sense now. I always thought Momma was just a one-off that I’d have to get away from, but maybe it was preparation for Leoben and destiny and all that crap.”

“Destiny?” Again, Sharon feels a little out of the loop.

Kara laughs, sort of a cackle even. “You got told about the crazy but not the destiny? Damn, Sharon, who were you talking to?”

“No one talked to me, Kara,” Sharon says flatly. “I overheard a few words here and there before people shut up.”

Kara shrugs a little. “So, I died, I came back, the sort of thing that hindsight tells me was material for my journey. But that sort of thing messes you up. And before then, it was Leoben and his dollhouse of torture on New Caprica, so it’s not like I was going in all fresh. I thought things were getting better, though, and then I just...came back and lost it.”

“Yeah, that kind of change doesn’t go over so well with relationships.” Their original conversation coming back to her mind, Sharon can at least relate to this.

“Nope,” Kara says shortly, although it’s not so light this time.

Later that day, as they sit under their tent and eat gathered fruit, Sharon thinks that she and Kara haven’t changed as much as they’d like. They’re still them. But she also notices that the changes are not because of love, and given that they don’t really have that option anymore, that’s good. Whatever change is left to do, it’ll have to be them doing it for themselves.

***

Kara looks like an angel as she reaches the ridge first, standing in the harsh sea breeze so her hair flies out behind her, face full of strength that you wouldn’t normally expect in something beautiful.

Sharon closes her eyes when she stands up there, and thinks that Kara seems to find more closure the longer they travel, and maybe that’s what this feeling rising in Sharon is. Perversely, it feels like happiness, which was not exactly what she was going for. Something a little less good would seem more appropriate.

“Remember Caprica City, on the good days?” Kara lets wistfulness enter her tone a lot more these days, after weeks of travel have settled her into this role.

“Where the beach smelled kind of like exhaust, but you didn’t complain about it?” Sharon looks down at the blue-grey ocean down below them, past the waving shore of sand.

“Too busy to complain,” Kara says. Then, she hums a little, and even with the breeze blowing Sharon can tell that the next few warbly words are Kara singing. “Ol’ Donatel with Zeus one morn...”

“Said have you frakked—” Sharon starts to continue, then laughs as Kara whips her head towards her. “What? Oh, you didn’t learn the dirty version?”

“Guess it’s never too late to learn new things.” Kara laughs then. “Okay come on, no one’s here to listen, belt it out.”

Sharon doesn’t stop to wonder if Ellen gave her that childhood memory, or if it was Cavil. Doesn’t matter anymore, not at all. She just roars out the raucous lyrics to the favorite camp song of horny sacrilegious teenagers everywhere in the Colonies, and once Kara’s half-horrified half-amused look fades she’s joining in, and they scare off the seagulls on the beach but they don’t care.

It’s late night before they’ve exhausted their repertoires of other songs. So late that Sharon doesn’t think about anything, just spoons up against Kara under their blankets in the tent and falls asleep. The next morning, she realizes for the first time that she’s had nightmares every night since the first Cylon attack. But no nightmares last night.

***

Sharon wakes another night to find that she’s not sleepy anymore. Kara is softly snoring next to her, but there’s enough space between them that Sharon can move without rousing her. Wrapping her blanket around her shoulders, Sharon steps out of their little shelter to stare at the stars.

Sometimes she wonders if the gods, or god, exist. She suppose if the rumors about Kara were true, she’s a sort of proof for all that, in some form. And there are certainly times when Kara seems otherworldly, as if she’s more than just her human self. Of course, she always was like that, only too vibrant and in the now for it to be quite so obvious back then.

Yet Kara’s not the same as faith and religion. Sharon gave those up, but they didn’t just fade away. Sitting out under the stars, she breathes out, and thinks that if there’s anything out there, she may not need it. She’s not closing any doors, but she’s not looking for new ones to open.

“I don’t miss you so much as I thought I would,” Sharon says to the twinkling stars. “Pilot wasn’t ever my identity.”

She doesn’t need to answer the follow-up question just then. There’s time. Sharon smiles up at the sky, arms curled around her knees.

“Talking to the stars?” Kara came up silently behind her.

“To myself,” Sharon replies. “You know, for when you don’t need an answer...”

“Maybe,” Kara says, but Sharon can tell it’s only a reference to herself.

Kara stands there with her for a few minutes, but goes back to the shelter. Sharon’s still not tired, so she lets her eyes soak up the stars as she guides her mind towards drifting thoughts together into organization.

***

The only time Sharon thinks this whole thing is a bad idea is when they go up into the mountains and it’s cold for the first time. No figs to eat, no dates, just small winter creatures before she and Kara descend to the steppes again and head up towards the river valley. Shivering with Kara in a cave, trying to stay warm, Sharon decides that she hates winter.

“This world’s got an attitude,” Kara breathes out, a smile floating across her face. “Maybe it’s biting back after we’ve burned so many campfires.”

“Nah, I don’t think it’s an obstacle for us,” Sharon says, scooting closer to Kara for her warmth. “An experience that I don’t want again, but just that.”

“If keeping warm has to be a goal, then it’s not just an experience,” Kara says.

Sharon, stealing under Kara’s blanket, Kara’s arm now over her shoulder, gives her a tight grin. “I figured it out.”

Kara’s eyebrows rise.

“You’re a leader of...everything in your life,” Sharon says, through rattling teeth as she tucks her hands in her armpits to warm them. “And people—to follow—is what you need, or you just lead yourself on some challenge.”

“Sharon the psychiatrist now,” Kara observes breathily, and it sounds like old Kara, but the meaning behind it is more of a facade.

“No, not that,” Sharon says quietly. “I don’t need people. I thought...I’m a wanderer, Kara. I don’t know if I always was, or if I made myself one. But I am. No leading, no following, just this. Existing. Life.”

Kara doesn’t say anything, just grips Sharon a little tighter. They keep each other warm, and Sharon thinks closure helps with that. When they finally get back to warmer climates, they sleep back to back and everything confirms what Sharon has decided for herself.

***

They come across other people as they go up the river delta they’ve found, a valley of fertile silt by the desert where the sun shines hot. They aren’t the people Kara needs, and Sharon doesn’t want them, so they try to pass by unnoticed and let them grow, learn, evolve the way they do on their own.

Sharon steps out ahead when they reach yet another ocean at the end of the river valley, blue-green and smelling of warmth. The sand is golden soft beneath her feet as Sharon slips free of her boots and steps into the shallows. Her arms reach out for the sea breeze and she breathes in the air of freedom.

Kara follows a few seconds behind, and they stand with bare toes buried in the wet sand until the sun starts falling and the air starts blowing back towards the sea. Northwards, Sharon knows from the space-maps made so long ago, is another continent of temperate life. She likes the crisp grasslands and verdant tropics, but if she stays too long there it’ll keep her from feeling at home.

Heart beating steadily as the wind cools her skin, she feels ready to sleep and then to walk again.

“Sharon,” Kara starts.

Kara's standing with arms crossed and face slightly grimacing, and not for the way the wind is blowing her hair wild. “I know,” Sharon says.

“You do, don’t you,” Kara answers, appreciation in her voice.

Sharon couldn’t have imagined doing it before, but her face is soft as she nods to Kara. It’s been a long day coming.

Kara’s eyes drop for a second as she breathes in.

“Some things you just have to let go of, if you want to go home,” Sharon says, because a few more words seem right for this moment. “We both have strange ways of being home. Maybe someday I’ll wander to yours?”

“Maybe I’ll be watching over, to come and bring you when you’re ready,” Kara says. She laughs a little, barely loud enough for the wind to carry to Sharon’s ears. “As if I even know half of what I’m saying. Where I’m going, that I might have figured out now. The why...that still escapes me, exactly.”

“Curiosity’ll kill you if you don’t find out.” Sharon shrugs.

“I think it might,” Kara says dryly, raising an eyebrow. Her face smooths out and looks less pained, and as she turns to offer a hand of farewell to Sharon, Sharon can see a glow of peace and power in that face that drives home exactly how small this world has been for Kara.

Sharon grasps Kara’s hand, letting her eyes speak the gratitude, but before the last little tie to Sharon disappears from Kara’s eyes, Sharon moves in and takes her in an embrace. Her arm claps firmly on Kara’s back, squeezing her close, and Kara hugs back the way she always has, with an intensity that belies all the times she seems to have dismissed everything.

But as Sharon pulls back, she sees that this time Kara needs a new intensity, and Sharon smiles and gives her a little push on the shoulder. “Go on, take the last step.”

Kara’s eyes shine with more than tears as she smiles and nods, taking a step back and a deep breath. Sharon inhales sharply and turns away at the last second, squinting her eyes towards the sunset as she feels a slight lump in her throat despite all her preparation.

When she turns back, Kara is gone, and only the peace remains with Sharon.

Sharon’s eyes sting a little, dampen, and it takes a moment before she can move. Kara’s last step on her journey in this world became Sharon’s first true one—and it’s a feeling too great for something as simple as happiness. The emotion only shakes her for a little, though. Then, softly kicking at the sand beneath her feet, Sharon walks up the beach to find the supplies that Kara left by their tent. It feels just how it should as she gets ready for sleep before her great journey finally starts.

The stars shine around her, the air cloaks her, the earth cradles her. Sharon’s not alone, she’s at home.

***

Sharon travels east around the warm ocean and through the land of rocky islands, where life has not yet started thriving, and yet she thinks it might someday. Struggles nearly have her starving, torn to pieces by the elements, caught by hungry creatures bigger than she is. Nothing sticks for long, though, and as long as she keeps moving there’s another thing to find that will keep her going on.

Standing at the foot of mountains that tower over the land, snowcapped and impenetrable, she thinks that somewhere on the other side is where some Colonials settled (over three years ago now). After testing herself on many a smaller mountain, Sharon feels the call to go up into these. She passes like a shadow through this world, here and there but never so much _there_ that she is defined by the there.

She swallows and thinks about the supplies on her back, and how long it may take to find a pass, and how she may not even make it. Even with all that, she plants her walking stick in front of her and puts one booted foot forward. She’s going up there. She’s going to scale those mountains, climb down the other side, and wander eastwards to lands she’s never seen. What defines her is ‘Sharon Valerii’, and she carries that wherever she goes.

Sharon Valerii takes another step forward. And smiles.


End file.
